Category Archives: game night

game night

Life, don’t talk to me about life

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic, pandemic legacy season 1

Yesterday it was Queen Elizabeth II 90th birthday. To celebrate the local council organised a birthday cake and giant card for the serfs of Wisbech to sign and munch on.

The Mayor (I'm sure he's got an evil plan just like the one in season three of Buffy) turned up to cut the cake and make a short speech to a crowd of locals eager for cake. Yeah the crap we will put up with for free cake. To add to the occasion the vintage fire engine was also out on display.

In the evening our Scooby gang met up to tackle the month of September in Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

After a short discussion about the misplay from the previous month, we decided to play as if we hadn't made completed the immunologists goals yet, well we hadn't. And that was the misplay, or egg on face bit.

Apart from the objective of finding the virologist which we needed to do as part of finding the bits we needed for the immunologist. We now had to find the paranoid soldier.

As is normal we started with one objective complete, we had a military base in each of the zones. The faded were starting to build up, we had cures for two diseases, close to finding the virologist, and on the way to finding that paranoid soldier.

We had a lucky break and found the paranoid soldier. Another goal achieved, one cure and September was ours. Box six was opened, as the cards were read progressing the story, “wait! What? No go back what was that?”

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Colonel Mustard was a traitor to the group! WTF???? He was lost, and had to be torn up. Our means of controlling the faded gone. For the rest of the game I'm a civilian.

OMG!!! The objective we auto complete is gone, replaced with a new one. What's just happened? We were further away from victory.

It turns out CoDa is all part of a complicated plot by a group called Zodiac, and was man made back at the CDC in Atlanta. We now had to start destroying military bases as acts of sabotage against the military plot of Zodiac.

Matt managed to destroy one military base, we just needed to get round again to him to do the second one. Jonathan had the cure for our final disease ready to go.

However we ran out of the faded to place on the board and therefore had an instant loss. The game had given us hope and then delivered a crushing soul destroying blow to us.

Apart from the hurt of losing another character (yeah I need to choose a new one for the September replay), the plot twist is cool, it wasn't cool losing a completed objective.

But this story is rather cool, I have loved the two major plot twists of the faded and now Zodiac. The searching for characters is good touch also. I am enjoying this story driven element of the game.

There wasn't enough time to do the second attempt at September that will have to wait until next week.

 

For the giggles

Ashes, chatteris warlords, game night
A lovely sunny spring day, having a life and commitments, whatever the reason it was a small turn out for last nights meetup to play games at the Chatteris Warlords.
As usual a variety of games were being played. March Jamie was constructing a Magic commander deck. A game of Bolt Action once more pitted allied forces against axis forces. Whilst Cthulhu had infiltrated the Fluxx universe in Cthulhu Fluxx. In a far corner four player Star Realms was taking place, followed by a just for the giggles game of Warhammer 40k Conquest by a couple of players.
My gaming for the evening saw me playing Robert at Ashes once a group discussion about Wizkids and how horrid their release schedule was with their games.

I was playing the constructed deck for Maeoni, while Robert played the constructed deck for Nessa. Instead of selecting our starting five cards we just dealt the top five of the deck to make up our first five. Well it made sense since we didn't know the decks or what cards would be good to start with.

I like that Ashes has suggested decks for all of the six Phoenixborn in the base box. It does allow noobs to the game to get up and running straight away, and then allow them to move onto deck building.

Despite loosing, I was only able to get gilders out, and the silver snake didn't make it until it was too late, I enjoyed playing.

Maybe we were playing slower than experienced players but we were noobs to the game after all.

The dice as a resource you have to manage is a great idea that works well. It'd be great to play this more often. Hopefully it will catch on. Then I can delve into the deck building side. Deck building is fun.

My second game of the evening and last was a couple of games of Cthulhu Fluxx. I broke even here with a win and a loss. My win was even sweeter than normal because it was given to me. March Jamie played an action that involved collecting up all the keepers and creepers out in front of people, shuffle them, then deal them back out to everyone. We had a few of both. Guess what got dealt to me? Yep the keeper and creeper that were needed to meet the active goal. I instantly won. Sweet.

Some great gaming again, well worth the thirty min drive.

 

Two Down One To Go

Cthulhu Realms, game night
With life events putting a stick in the spokes of life's bike, Ben was unable to attend the Friday night gaming group in Wisbech. Which meant that our gaming plans were also in chaos. I hadn't bought anything with me to play, because I had been expecting to play Agricola.
So my first game of the evening was my second game ever of Cthulhu Realms. If you remember I'm not a big fan of this “improved” Star Realms. Unlike Star Realms there is zero buzz for the game. Even with the imminent release of an app version (apparently due in next month or so) I don't think this will change.
I think Cthulhu Realms does have better rules for multiplayer. Particular how it handles the trade row, or rows in this case, and dealing the damage out to the players on either side of you. But these rules can be adopted in a multiplayer game of Star Realms. Which I may well do.
I still dislike the iconography, and decoding. Yes more plays will make it easier. But I'm very loath to put that effort in.
Playing the game this second time didn't warm me to the game, I'm still frosty about it.
Next up instead of Agricola we played a five player game of Caverna.
“Have you played Caverna?”
“No”
“Don't worry it's just like playing Agricola”
“Er I've not played that either”

I'd say the rules explanation at best could be described as lacking. Much of the start of the game was spent in frustration.

Ok, it's worker placement. I worked that out. Oh wheat gives me points at end, and can be used for food. Cool. I can work with that. Sadly I wouldn't work with that if I'd known it was half a point per wheat token I had.

Happily breeding pigs and sheep. Oh they are worth points at the end. Cool. What if I don't have a cow or dog I get negative points?!!! Why wasn't this mentioned at the start, but left to scoring.

Why were they levelling up their dwarfs? What benefit did that give you?

Ok you get the picture. It was like playing a game with a fog of war. The rules were need to know, and I didn't need to know.

I can't say I really enjoyed the game. But I think that is down more to being in the dark a lot.

Plus on top of all that another week with that bloody loud music being played. One more shot I think then my Friday's may just be free again. This group is fast becoming an unpleasant experience.

 

Fenland Gamers April 16 Meetup

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night saw the monthly meetup of the Fenland Gamers.

Our first game of the evening was the latest “accidental” addition to Jonathan's collection, the chilli growing themed game Scoville.

Wow is the game good, and I'm not just saying this because I won. Ok won is an understatement I knocked it out the park.

There is a lot to love about this game. Each round (apart from the first where the order is selected at random) the players bid in a blind auction for the right to choose where they want to go in the turn order. You may actually want to be last guaranteed! In our game I was the highest bidder and first most rounds. I was using the market to keep topping up my cash each round to power this. After the order has been sorted, players form first to last get to choose an auction card from an auction row. These cards give you extra chillies dependent on what is depicted on the card. So one card may give you a black chilli, while another may give you a yellow, green and blue.

I love the auction mechanic for deciding turn order. Whether it's a blind auction like this or the one in Five Tribes. So much is involved in that bid you make. How important is it you go first? What is the least I can spend to make sure I get the position I want? Etc.

I loved the fact that the last (fulfilment) and first (planting) stage of a round went in the order first to last. Then in the middle, harvesting the order gets reversed. So it may be important that you go first harvesting to get that particular coloured chilli you need. Which means winning that blind auction and putting your marker last is an option.

Fulfilment is cool too. Being able to complete recipes for points, and/or buy from the farmers market to gain combinations of points, money and chillies. So I could trade two green chillies to get four points, three coins and a brown chilli. Plus I can sell chillies to get money. Of which the price is decided by the number of chillies of that colour being sold that have been planted divided by two.

When planting chillies you can also score points by planting a chilli that matches one of the trophy tokens (which vary in value). So there are lots of scoring opportunities through out the game.

You also get three bonus tokens that give you extra abilities, like planting an extra chilli, or moving one ,pore space and changing direction. However if you don't use them they are worth extra points at the end of the game. This is very similar to the bonus abilities in Seasons.

How many recipes, chillies, money etc you have is all hidden information. And there is a player screen provided for each player for them to hide their bits behind. So you are having to remember who is going for what.

The wooden chilli tokens are awesome. I would like to have seen some bigger size coins. They are on the small side. Plus the player screens could be larger. Having holes in the game board the shape of the chilli tokens to hold them in place really works.

Overall I love this game a lot. Like the theme this game is hot! Definitely going on the wish list.

We followed up Scoville with intrigue and political manoverings by playing Council of Verona.

For such a “simple” game, this is really good. It has a mini card draft where you are drafting cards to help you to hopefully achieve the agenda of a character on the cards. Not all characters have agendas some have abilities that allow you to switch cards around, or tokens.

The game plays quickly, which is lucky because it took one play through for everyone to get the game.

It's a shame this game and it's expansions are at best a pain to get in the UK. And describing it as a pain is an understatement. I think this would be far far more popular if it was easier to get. It's quick to play, has a surprising bit of depth to it. Plus if you are teaching Romeo and Juliet (the world it is set in) this would make a great game for students to play.

The evening ended up with Love Letter The Hobbit (nope not going to use the full name it's too long winded, mind you it would be shorter than this little aside) and everyone type casting me as a hobbit or dwarf!

Every time the others played a Smaug, “Darren, are your Bilbo?” Or “Darren, are you Thorin?” Or “Darren, are you Killi or Filli?” Not “Darren, are you Legolas?” Or some other non vertically challenged race/person.

Nope little digs at my height, beard and receding hair line where the order of the day.

The game of hate on Darren, ended in a draw between myself and Gavin, as time had ran out.

Another great evening of gaming.

 

Street Magic in Chatteris

chatteris warlords, game night, netrunner

Last night was the now weekly journey from the frontier town that is Wisbech to further into the depths of the fens and the outpost town of Chatteris. The things we do to play games!

My first game of the evening saw Noise returning to the table to run against the Jinteki Personal Evolution. It felt good to have him back running. I really am an anarch at heart. My opening hand had Street Magic and Same Old Thing, plus a Hivemind and Streetpeddler. I decided to keep my cards.

The Corp scum took an early lead, after establishing a scoring server protected by three pieces of ice. I had none of my ice breakers (ok that's basically Faust and David, with a little help from Parasite and Datasucker) out. I did get Datasucker out early and an incubator.
The Corp did score an early Chronos Project taking out about five cards. The second one they scored took a larger chunk of cards out. Apparently this deck had been designed to cater for my Noise. Isn't that sweet?
My problem this game was econ, and not getting my ice breakers out. Aesops didn't appear to near the end, and the same for Faust.
I did score a couple of agendas, one from Archives and the other from R&D. And I could have won if I had the credits to score the agenda.
Looking back I think I should have done a mulligan on the starting hand. But I didn't want to lose that Street Magic.
I also got to play Star Fluxx. As usual this game is beautifully chaotic. Just when I thought I was going to win, but my plan was thwarted. Allowing the player after me to grab the win.
My final game of the evening was introducing Ben and some others to Love Letter The Hobbit Battle of the Five Armies. That's a bit of a mouthful so I just call it Love Letter Hobbit.
I do like this version of Love Letter, but not the gem tokens. So I replaced them with small blue cubes. I love the touches like the one ring having a zero value all during the round until the end when it gets a value of seven. Or Legolas and Tauriel having different win conditions.
Batman Love Letter is still my favourite but this is damn close. Still neither Ben or I won.
Yes there was some Bolt Action last night. Over in another corner was a group doing a draft cube of Magic.

It did seem quieter than usual last night. But then there are going to be nights like this.

There was also a club committee meeting last night. Basically it was blah blah blah to me, well I'm not a committee member, but Ben is, and it was held during our Netrunner game! So while that was on hold I was at a lose end. Which eventually saw me passing the time playing Star Fluxx.

I was called into the meeting to confirm I was volunteered (thanks Ben) to help out on the clubs Facebook page.

But as usual another fun evening of gaming in the depths of the fens.

August and everything after

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic, pandemic legacy season 1

After an intermission last night the A Team were back fighting to save the world.

Each month we start with an objective completed, because we have military bases in each of the zones. It's a nice feeling knowing we only have two objectives to complete.

Before August started we had some cards to read. Suddenly we weren't just searching for a virologist but also an immunologist. Another search board was added. This time we had to be in a rioting faded city to look for them.

We had a new character join our team Colonel Mustard, he had been drafted in to replace my quarantine specialist who unfortunately died in July. Mustard had the ability to spend an action to remove a faded figure from a city, plus he could freely move through roadblocks. Plus as a character upgrade when he left a city with faded on it one of them gets removed. With all that cool stuff he also had a draw back. For Mustard to cure a disease he needs to have two extra cards of the correct colour to cure it. Mustard was going to be our engine for controlling the faded.

With a little help from Jonathan and Debbie, Mat was able to find this new elusive immunologist. Lots of stickers were added to the rule book to cover the new stuff bought to the game.

This is where (just been looking up some stuff, and discovered this) we have done a MASSIVE misplay!!!!

We had discovered two cures, starting to look at the third when outbreaks overtook us and we had lost.

August reset time for our second attempt. We needed a win else we would be opening that mysterious box four.

We'd won! Our player deck was dangerously low. So pretty close. It helped having the Colonel keeping the faded down. He even cured a disease! Ok it took seven cards but he did it.

I'm loath now to talk about the win and how we got there, or my thoughts on the immunologist and the bits we missed played.

I'm not sure how we move forward with the misplay. It's going to have to be a group discussion on our next play.

Once we have a decision then I'll come back and look at the bits. At the moment I feel dirty and foolish.

 

Hunter Rules

game night

I think this is becoming a thing now, Friday evening on way to con club to play games stop in The Luxe and have a quick chat and catch up with Bouncy. Then onto the con club to play games.

This Friday night gaming session is a different experience to the others. It's a younger crowd, and with one of them blasting their unwanted music during the evening (luckily not all the time) at times more irritating.

However Ben from Chatteris was there as usual, so with Jamie and his son we played a four player game of Star Realms using the hunter rules. Which meant you attacked the person to your left for direct damage, but could do both sides for bases and outposts.

As is now tradition for multiplayer games of Star Realms Ben was eliminated first. Now tradition dictates that after Ben has been whipped from the board, that I will soon follow him out of the exit.

However tradition was not to be followed this time. Just as the Emporer wanted Luke to kill his father, but failed to do because of some misguided family bond. We were not going to see that sentimentality tonight, Jamie's son dispatched his dad from the game in a cold vicious manner.

It was me against the heir to the empire. Sadly for the heir, I had a good engine up and running, that allowed me to inflict massive hits of damage. I wasn't going to let the fact I was up against a youngster get in my way of victory. So against tradition I dispatched the outposts in my way and delivered the fatal blow to get the win.

Our next game of the evening was Epic. We did a draft and played the hunter rules, which worked the same as it did in Star Realms. Attack to the left, events to both sides.

This game went the way of tradition in Star Realms. Ben got steam rolled by Jamie. Which then meant I was on the receiving end of the Jamie war machine. I didn't last long. Tradition was upheld this time.

It was father against son. Sadly for the young lad, his father is a cold blooded killer when it comes to Epic. This was Darth Vader destroying Luke. There was no fatherly love here, sentimentality went out the door. Nothing was stopping Jamie from being victorious. Oh yeah Jamie won.

Our final game of the evening was Star Fluxx. With the usual chaotic game play, Jamie managed to surface from the chaos victorious.

That was our last game of the evening before I set off into the night.

A great evening of gaming, some intense moments, some fun moments.

 

Wheeling and Dealing

chatteris warlords, game night

Yesterday was Tuesday in case that little snippet passed you by. But it also means it was the weekly club night for the Chatteris Warlords.

Earlier in the day Robert at the club had posted on the Facebook page for selling and trading games that he had a couple of games up for trade. I was interested in his Kickstarter copy of the original Boss Monster. I wanted the exclusives that came with it, shiney boss cards, metal level up tokens, mini expansions, exclusive sleeve.

At the meet I checked the game over while showing Robert the games I had bought to trade. It was hard selecting games to offer, but in the end I had come up with three games, Tiny Epic Kingdoms plus the mat that you can get for it, Eight Minute Empire and Epic Spell Wars.

Robert was interested in the first two games. We came to a deal that involved the exchanging of the two games he was interested in for a drink from the bar and Boss Monster.

So I have two copies of the first Boss Monster. The shiney Bosses etc have been merged into my combined set, leaving just a plain first set. What to do with that? Well that will be given to Nath when I see him, I've also put the normal bosses from Boss Monster 2 into it.

My first game of the evening was against Robert. We sat down and duelled it out playing Star Realms. We were both scraping our starter cards, Robert was buying more than myself. But in the end it was his engine that worked better than mine, and was inflicting large twenty odd points of damage each turn.

Next up four of us played Firefly Fluxx. I enjoyed Firefly Fluxx, is it my favourite version? I don't think so. We did witness Robert take a turn that was longer than a John Bohnam drum solo, which by the time he had finished playing all his cards won him the game!

We followed our game of Firefly Fluxx with a game of Batman Fluxx. Once more we got to a point where Robert went off into the Fluxx version of the drum solo again. This time he didn't get the win, that was left for Chris who came after him.

The rest of the club were playing Colt Express, Bolt Action, a paupers cube of Magic, Sentinals of the Multiverse, Lords of Waterdeep, a little historical war gaming and a futuristic mech version of Bolt Action called Gates of Antares.

I still don't get the whole war game thing. The tape measures, etc. In this day and age I definitely don't get the having to cut bits of a model off a spew, glue together and paint. Painting ok I can see the fun I that. But the likes of Cool Mini or Not, FFG show the miniatures for these games should be complete and ready to paint.

Oh and then the constant having to reference the manual. Yes I know the two playing this game only play it four or five times a year. So gaps between play just long enough not to be able to remember the rules could completely. But still.

A great evening as usual.

Dice Down

game night

After getting Nico chipped yesterday, yes I know the vet was playing with death, I made it to the Friday evening gaming group that meets up at the Con Club.

Naturally when I got there games were already in progress.

My first game of the evening was taking over some-ones hand at Star Realms when they had to go off and setup for their game of Warhammer 40k I think it was. So I'm not counting this as my play. The player I took over from was a noob to the game, I believe this was his first time playing. Needless to say the deck I took over wasn't great. Lots of cards I wouldn't buy. However it did allow me to knock Ben out of the game. Then mirroring the previous time I played a four player Star Realms game I was knocked out.

It then remained for the back and forth between the two remaining players. Both able to keep topping up their authority each turn. However the superior base and outpost purchases of one player gave her the win, and more authority than she started with.

The first proper game of the evening for me was Dead of Winter. While setting up it was discovered my exposure dice was missing! We had a good look for it, but it was not to be found, so we improvised with a d10.

We did the suggested first main mission that required us to kill a certain number of zombies (based on the number of players) but they would only count if when killed a d6 was rolled and it had a value of four or higher.

All I'm going to say is my group of survivors drew the short stick when it came to longevity of life. Let's just say my rolling of the improvised exposure dice, and the others in the group who did it for me too, were not great rolls. My survivors were getting bitten a lot. This may sound callous but if we had beat the main mission would have meant I'd met my secret objective and won.

The round counter was ticking down slowly, but because of survivors being bitten and their death, and the failure to complete a crisis we failed the mission due to running out of morale.

It's a shame the exposure dice was missing/lost. It did kind of ruin my enjoyment of the game. After a search at home and still no sign of the dice, I was straight onto Plaid Hat to get a replacement organised. Very quick response from them directing me to a replacements page to fill in, that actually requires a photo of the bar code of the game box as proof of purchase and allow them to track faulty batches. So the replacement is in progress, but will I be able to play the game and enjoy it in the meantime? I don't know. Even with the replacement sorted, it's eating away at me about what happened to the exposure dice. I don't remember seeing the dice the other day when I was putting the standees together. Damn how long has this been missing?

I'm going to pass judgement and thoughts of the game until the exposure dice has been replaced.

Our final game of the evening was Tiny Epic Galaxies. A game I won with 21 points, however Ben was looking at coming last, but jumped into second because he had completed his secret mission.

A good evening of gaming despite the missing dice.

 

The Month of July

Fenland Gamers, game night, pandemic, pandemic legacy season 1

Oh spoiler alert. Yes it's that post again where I talk about my latest play through of Pandemic Legacy Season 1, which may or may not include spoilers. So if you want to remain oblivious to what happens in the game so that you too can experience all its twists and turns as surprises then stop reading now and see you in the next post.

She was only with us for a short time but her light shone brightly in that time. Last night Wanda the quarantine specialist passed away after a rather vicious attack by one of the faded fatally wounded her.

Basically last night the Scooby gang (yes I went there) finally after a couple of delays got to tackle the month of July in Pandemic Legacy Season 1.

Our first attempt at defeating July failed miserably. We did complete an objective or two, and were working on finding cures for all three diseases, when epidemics turned into pandemics and outbreaks just over ran us. It all happened so fast we didn't know what hit us.

One thing we had to do was build a research station in a city that was faded. Why? Well that's where the virologist is hiding who may have a cure for the faded! Well we are assuming it's a cure, we won't know until we find them (a new objective) and can reveal on the card what they have discovered.

Our second attempt at completing July was off to a good start. We automatically complete one objective now each game, because we have a military base in each zone. Which means only two objectives to complete.

We had two diseases eradicated, another objective down, and with Hawkeye sitting with enough cards to cure the final disease we were damn close to winning. However the faded were ripe for out breaking big time. Our team just needed to get to Hawkeyes turn.

On B's turn an epidemic hit causing a minor outbreak placing a faded in the city Wanda was in. She already had two scars. At the start of her turn she was dead!

It came round to Wandas turn, the faded delivered its fatal blow to her. A civilian popped into her place to try and carry on her good work. But to no avail, another epidemic hit, this time the faded damn burst, the tidal wave of pandemics started to hit, we could have survived but ran out of faded figures. Game over.

That was close, damn close.

Looks like another new team member joins us for August.